Tagged: cranes, draft horse, red moon, rocks, The Daily Post photo challenge, Weight(less)]]>https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/weightless/feed/1susilovellIMG_3952IMG_4322IMG_1521IMG_3543Beginning Fall Clean-Up of the Pond: Who’s Living In The Water Hyacinth Roots?https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/living-in-the-water-hyacinth-roots/
https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/living-in-the-water-hyacinth-roots/#respondMon, 09 Sep 2013 13:55:23 +0000http://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/?p=232Continue reading →]]>The mist is lifting from the mountain and the sun looks like it might break through. I’ve been scooping leaves out of the pond. Not too many have fallen yet, but as the pond is in woodlands the whole surface will soon be covered.

I like to leave a lot of the pond clean-up until all the leaves have fallen but some things need to be done now, such as taking the water hyacinth out of the pond.

The roots are great for helping keep the water clean but if the plants die and sink, they’ll add to the sludge on the bottom.

When I buy them in spring, I tie them into circles of tubing to prevent them sinking in the fall, but this summer has been exceptional for water hyacinths and the five original plants more than trebled with new offspring breaking away from the tubing and floating off in the pond.

When I pull out a batch of hyacinths, tiny frogs leap off, and a little yellow face peeks out of the dense black roots – a salamander. Another salamander, this one tiny, struggles through the roots to see what’s going on. Spidery beings, wormy beings, fishy beings, all sorts of swimming, creeping insects appear. Such strange shapes. A huge tadpole falls out (must be a bullfrog tadpole). I’m amazed by how gelatinous it looks. I would have expected something more solid.

I feel terrible at disturbing these creatures. I quickly replace the hyacinths in the water, scoop up the tadpole and watch it wriggle away into the pond’s muddy bottom.

What to do? I don’t want to destroy their habitat, but the pond is old and will fill up with sludge if I let leaves and hyacinths decompose in it.

Finally I decide to rest the tip of the mass of plants on the bank and leave the rest in the water. Tomorrow I’ll pull it a little higher up on the bank. Let’s hope that will encourage the residents of the water hyacinth roots to relocate.

Labor Day weekend – and the rain came down. Usually I’m happy to see the rain at this time of the year because the water level in the stream and pond is so low but that’s not a problem this year, given all the rain we’ve had through the summer. In fact there were floods not so far away.

Discovered an interesting water alternative at Festiv’Art in Frelighsburg where the public toilets were the environmentally friendly kind where one uses sawdust instead of water. The waste is then composted with straw, leaves and so on. Important to use a ratio of 1:1 waste to other natural materials, I was told, to avoid unpleasant smells. A more productive (ahem!) idea than the suggestion in a letter in the Globe and Mail that people should conserve water by stopping to drink it!

Last year it was a Belted Kingfisher. What a commanding presence with his big handsome crested head, his strong beak. He sat on the lowest branch of the spruce over the water, making a terrific din. Below him was a large dead snake in the water. I thought the kingfisher might have found the snake too big to handle and had dropped it into the pond and was now trying to retrieve it, but I’m told that is highly unlikely. He stayed there all day, then that was it, I never saw him again. I had to fish the snake out with my net.

Another time the surprise was a beautiful red fox. No hanging around. Just slipped past.

Then there was a bear – but fortunately that was on a neighbor’s property!

This year, there was the turtle. A bee sting was new to me too. And today: two fairly young deer with antlers. We see a lot of deer including, once, a three-legged deer, but I’d never, in the more than twenty years I’ve been here, seen antlered deer. The antlers were about eighteen inches, knobby rather than spiked points. Just beautiful. I reached for my camera, but they were already gone. Good. Hunting season is not so very far off.

Did I see two garter snakes? Or the same snake twice? The first was under the pump cover. It was small and wriggled away in an instant.

The other (or the same one) slithered over the patio as I was trying to clean some of the mossy paving stones. This one looked bigger – or was that because I saw more of it?

An agitated squeaking from the edge of the pond. The grasses rustled and I caught sight of another snake – with a tiny frog in its mouth. More squeaking. I know I shouldn’t interfere with the course of nature but I stamped my foot, hoping that would frighten the snake off.

The snake leaped right into the air, tiny frog still in its mouth, landing in the pond. It rippled over the surface of the water towards the outlet. By the time it slid over the rocks, red tongue was flickering in and out, the frog was gone.

My mother bought the seeds when she was here on holiday the summer after my father died. They had been his favorite flower and she was going to take them home to plant them in her own garden. But then she worried about whether it was legal to take seeds into the UK. Suppose she was arrested? She decided not to take them back. Instead she wanted to plant the seeds beside the pond. Over the years the flowers have flourished and spread. It’s always a special moment when I catch a glimpse of that dramatic scarlet. And the hummingbirds love them too.

Tagged: cardinal flower, earth pond, lobelia cardinalis, memories]]>https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/scarlet-spikes-beside-the-earth-pond/feed/0susilovelllobelia cardinalis - cardinal flowerThe Firsts of Summerhttps://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/summerfirsts/
https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/summerfirsts/#respondWed, 14 Aug 2013 17:38:15 +0000http://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/?p=179Continue reading →]]>So many wonderful firsts of summer: the first firefly, the first croak of a bullfrog, the first flower, the first swim in the earth pond… This week? The firsts that say fall is on the way: picking the first ripe blackberry (early this year), the first red leaves appearing on the trees, the first buds on the Japanese anenomes, a first something in the air. Tagged: earth pond, nature, outdoors, signs of fall, summer]]>https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/summerfirsts/feed/0susilovellearth pond with fishAt One With Nature. Ouch!https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/at-one-with-nature-ouch/
https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/at-one-with-nature-ouch/#respondMon, 29 Jul 2013 13:06:18 +0000http://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/?p=155Continue reading →]]>The sun is shining but the weather-stick is pessimistic. The bugs are out in force today. The air is full of all kinds of winged insects, wasps, mosquitoes, bees, moths, no-see-ums.

The only way to sit by the pond is either to wear my mesh top and pants (far too hot for that) or to put up the screen tent I bought last year. I don’t like putting it up as the blue frame just doesn’t blend with the natural surroundings.

On the other hand, bugs – especially the biting kind – seem to be irresistibly drawn to me and I react very badly to bites. Last year a bite made my eyelid swell so terrifyingly that I ended up in Emergency at the local hospital.

Inside my screen tent, I spread out first a camping tarpaulin and then my yoga mat. I drop down, cross my ankles, close my eyes. The splashing of the frog fountain, a blast of music from a big party at the neighbours on one side, the buzz of a lawnmower on the other, a hearty burp from a frog, the hum of the pump for the bubble tubing that circulates oxygen in the pond… Ah, at one with nature. Breathe in-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four…

I leap to my feet. My left buttock is stinging. The ants have not taken kindly to my invasion of their territory. I smear great gobs of ointment over the bites. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

Tagged: ants, bugs, earth pond, nature, outdoors]]>https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/at-one-with-nature-ouch/feed/0susilovellhummingbirdbank of day liliesgrasshopperOf Rain And Change and Hummingbirds and Witcheshttps://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/rainandhummingbirds/
https://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/rainandhummingbirds/#respondMon, 22 Jul 2013 15:34:01 +0000http://reflectionsfromtheearthpond.wordpress.com/?p=149Continue reading →]]>As the rain comes down, a flock of seven or eight wild turkeys fly up into the trees alongside the stream for shelter. I hope that’s a good idea – a tree beside the pond has just fallen. Not right down. The trunk broke off and hit the ground but the upper branches caught in the trees beside it. There was no warning, and not even much wind, just a loud crack and down it fell. Those turkeys are huge, I hope the trees can take their weight. What a noise they make as they fly up one after the other.

Already the temperature is several degrees cooler. Such a relief after the hot humid days. The rain is flattening the straggly stems of the tansy which hasn’t flowered yet. An artist neighbour gave me a pot of the plant years ago, to keep the witches away.

There’s a chickadee at the feeder. Yippee! In years past we would have said ‘oh, only a chickadee?’ but this year we’ve had so few birds visit that every feathered friend dropping by feels like a visit from the Queen. I still hear the birds in the woods of course, and am happy when I wake to their dawn chorus. Then I think of my mother calling me one morning after she first got hearing aids to tell me that there was still a dawn chorus. She’d thought that was a thing of the past, that the birds didn’t do that any more.

In fine weather hawks still circle high above. Plops around the pond as their shadows pass over and the frogs dive for cover. And every so often the crows sweep in by the dozen, cawing and circling, probably harassing some poor owl in the trees. I’ve been told never to admit to hearing an owl as then I’d be passing the bad spirit on to the person I tell.

Last year a pair of chipping sparrows spent the summer in the blackberry bushes on the slope beside the pond. They zapped to and fro across the pond and sang so cheerfully that I hoped they’d return. The blue jays always used to drop by at about 4.30 for an evening snack at the feeder, driving away the nuthatches and chickadees. And where are the woodpeckers? Have they gone deeper into the woods because of the building that’s been going on nearby? A young hairy woodpecker visited yesterday – the first since the winter – and to my amazement, even hopped into the little birdhouse beside the feeder. I’d always thought of the birdhouse as more ornamental than practical, and was surprised he could fit through the entrance hole!

I worry about the hummingbirds. They’ve come every summer for twenty years. I was so happy to see them when they arrived early in May this year, but that afternoon we had a surprise cold snap and late heavy snowstorm. We haven’t seen them since. We keep on refreshing the feeder for them, hoping.

UPDATE! The day after writing this post (waiting for the library to open so I could go online), was just beautiful. I chose a different spot to sit beside the pond and – zoom… there went a pair of hummingbirds! I couldn’t believe it. Just shows – one shouldn’t give up hope. So glad they are back.